The brains behind Bud Light’s self-destruction were deliberate about the decision.
In a video going viral for all the wrong reasons, the vice president of Anheuser-Busch in charge of the Bud Light brand explained the reasoning for the advertising strategy that led to the ill-fated decision to put the face of “trans” celebrity Dylan Mulvaney on a custom can.
Most executives might think insulting their customers isn’t a good marketing tool, but Anheuser-Busch VP Alissa Heinerscheid clearly doesn’t see it that way — since that’s exactly what she did.
In an interview recorded March 30 with a podcast called “Make Yourself at Home,” Heinerscheid effectively explained that the Bud Light brand she took over in July just had too many, well, Bud Light customers.
And Heinersheid is clearly not enamored of that breed of male.
Check out a portion of the interview here:
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Bud Light, she said, had been in “decline” for some time.
“So I have this super clear mandate. We need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand. And my, what I brought to that, was a belief in ‘OK, what does evolve and elevate mean?’ It means inclusivity. It means shifting the tone. It means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and different and appeals to women and to men.
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“And representation is … at the heart of evolution. You’ve gotta see people who will reflect you in the work. And we had this hangover. I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor. And it was really important that we had another approach.”
The word choice is interesting. “Fratty”? “Out of touch”? “Fratty” in the sense of fraternities, meaning young men? That would be most of the beer market (as anyone who’s been around beer or young men would probably know).
“Out of touch”? With what? The Dylan Mulvaneys of the world and the rest of the freak show “trans” community that Democrats seem to be convinced is going to be an ascendant majority on the basis of less than 1 percent of the population?
So instead of using “fratty, kind-of-out-of-touch humor” — the kind that might appeal to say, the young American men who’d be most likely to drink Bud Light, instead of something with either decent taste or a real kick — Heinersheid decided to “evolve and elevate” her advertising.
Young American men — the kind who like girls but don’t think they are girls — are clearly not evolved and elevated enough for her.
(The rainbow in the background might have looked like it was telegraphing that, but the whole gig of “Make Yourself at Home” is interviewing noteworthy personalities where they live. Heinerscheid, who has three children, was interviewed in her home and said early in the interview that the artwork in the background is her children’s. The youngest of her children “adores rainbows” she said, while her daughter likes ice cream cones.)
Not all her marketing moves have been disastrous. Henerscheid cited two ads featuring women in roles outside the stereotypical beer-commercial lane of short shorts midriff-baring T-shirts.
They can be viewed here and here. To be fair, if neither makes you run out and buy a case of Bud Light right now, they won’t turn you off at the prospect.
But the Dylan Mulvaney decision is a different matter entirely. That revolting decision to put a revolting personality on a beer can to represent solidarity with a revoltingly ignorant worldview is likely to go down in marketing history as a blunder for the ages.
How exactly does a functioning intellect go from trying to attract more customers to insulting the existing customer base, to gratuitously alienating a large part of the potential market? Does Henerscheid and the marketing geniuses around here seriously think a persona like Mulvaneys — a miserable half-man pretending to be a woman not even half as realistically as Flip Wilson did Geraldine — is the key to expanding the brand’s acceptance?
It’s an insult to both men and women.
And Henerscheid’s interview was taken that way in a social media uproar that cannot have been what Hennersheid wanted.
But at least she got some publicity of her own out of it. As one Twitter user put it, “Now we can put a face to Anheuser Busch’s failure.”
Now we can put a face to Anheuser Busch‘s failure.
— graywolf (@JackieV1022) April 10, 2023
There were plenty more comments like that — and if there were any that were flattering, they were pretty hard to come by.
So the plan was to hire a person that represents less than 1% of the population, whose target audience wouldn’t touch a lite beer if their lives depended on it, whilst simultaneously annoying the entire customer base. Nice work everyone
— Simon Hodge (@KingsiBC) April 10, 2023
Yup. She elevated it all right. As a 30 year customer she elevated me to seek alternatives. Bye @AnheuserBusch
— God Bless the USA (@tek22gbp) April 10, 2023
FAIL! It’s not “inclusive” to use trans gender people to represent your product. Because you will push away everyone who does not agree with the transgender movement. And you will have alienated them. Instead, you should try just to make a better beer.
— Duke Scout (@DukeScout) April 10, 2023
Brilliant strategy to hang your marketing plan on Trans appeal for 1% of the market while insulting the 45% of the women and the 54% of the men in the market. Go woke and go broke but, fire the marketing exec before Bud Light lands in the graveyard of forgotten brews.
— MillenbruckSTL (@millenbruck_stl) April 10, 2023
And tweets like these two made the real points:
Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.
How’s that working out for you, lady? @budlight pic.twitter.com/zNYKbMnZnu
— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) April 9, 2023
I’m no expert on beer markets. But it sounds like she is way out of touch with her customer base, especially Bud Light.
— Brian L Morgan (@BrianLeeMorgan) April 10, 2023
It’s no secret that the American beer market has changed drastically in recent years.
Bars, restaurants, even grocery store shelves are awash in artisanal beers from microbreweries that didn’t exist a decade ago, much less pose a threat to the dominance of giants like Bud and Bud Light.
So there’s no question that some new marketing would be in order.
But marketing that deliberately ignores the base just to chase the part fad/part fraud “transgender” figures like Mulvaney isn’t likely to help in the long run.
Where Bud Light goes from here isn’t clear — the company itself might not even know.
But one thing is blindingly obvious:
Those “fratty, kind-of-out-of-touch” customers have been keeping Bud Light in business for a long time.
Heinerscheid might not like them, but they’re the reason the company she works for even exists.
She and the rest of the Bud Light brain trust might want to deliberate on that if they want to keep their jobs.
